How faith helped the monarchy flex

Understanding how the British monarchy has evolved, means understanding its foundation in faith. Ian Bradley explains.

Ian Bradley

Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews.

an etching shows William and Mary is a classical scene, priests stand to their right while dogs chew bones at their feet.

A broadsheet illustration celebrates William and Mary, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Lambeth Palace Library.

Christian monarchy has played a central part in the history of the British Isles, promoting the rule of order, justice and mercy in conformity with the values of the kingdom of God and cementing a close alliance between the institutions of crown and church.

Both these aspects are well illustrated in the life and deeds of the first English king to convert to Christianity. Aethelbert, who ruled Kent from 587 to 616, seems to have come to faith through a combination of the influence of his wife, Bertha, the daughter of a Frankish Christian king, and the preaching of St Augustine, who arrived in Thanet in 597, having been sent from Rome by Pope Gregory. According to one account, 10,000 of Aethelbert’s subjects followed him in converting and underwent a mass baptism. Among his first actions as a Christian king were to issue the first set of laws in the English language and to grant land to Augustine on which to build an Abbey, which later became Canterbury Cathedral.

Reign responsibly

Exemplified by such figures as Arthur and Alfred, Christian kingship brought new titles as well as new responsibilities for Britain’s rulers. The first to be appropriated was that of ruling through the grace of God, or Deo Gratia, the idea that is still expressed on every coin of the realm through the abbreviation DG. The late eighth-century Anglo-Saxon king Offa described himself as ‘by the divine controlling grace king of the Mercians’. From the mid-tenth century, several English kings also began styling themselves Christ’s Vicar or deputy. Edgar, Alfred’s great grandson who ruled from 957 to 975, so described himself when founding a new monastery at Winchester in 966. Some years later Ethelred II stated that ‘the king must be regarded not only as the head of the church but also as a vicar of Christ among Christian folk’.

Cult kings

The Middle Ages saw the flowering of the cult of Christian monarchy as both splendid and servant-like, pious and chivalrous, full of knightly virtue, gung-ho triumphalism and miraculous powers, as exemplified in the widespread belief that the king’s touch could cure those suffering from scrofula. While Medieval monarchs cultivated magnificent splendour, they also espoused the theme of the servant-king and acknowledged their utter dependence on God’s grace. Both these elements were reflected in the civic triumphs staged around Epiphany or Advent for the entrance of monarchs into the cities of their realms with the king being portrayed as the type of Christ and the queen as the bearer of heavenly glory. Deliberately modelled on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, they served as a reminder of the journey to be undertaken by all souls, including royal ones, towards death and the throne of heaven.

Moderate monarchy

The crown played a crucial part in the English Reformation which was initiated by Henry VIII with the help of his loyal lieutenant Thomas Cranmer. Together they created what was effectively a nationalised state church of a moderately Protestant hue with the monarch at its head, bishops and a conservative liturgy in English. Subsequent sovereigns made their influence felt on the emerging Church of England, with Edward VI steering it in a more Protestant direction and playing a key role in the preparation of the first English Prayer Book of 1549, and Elizabeth steadying it to produce the Anglican via media which has remained one of its distinguishing characteristics to this day.

The monarch's headship of the Church of England was a key part of the Reformation settlement. It was established in the 1534 Supremacy Act which declared King Henry VIII 'the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England' with full authority to intervene in its affairs. Elizabeth I modified the monarch’s title from ‘Supreme Head’ to 'Supreme Governor', which it has remained ever since. Alongside it goes the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’, represented on coins as F.D., originally given to Henry VIII by the Pope in 1521 for his defence of the traditional sacraments of the Catholic Church against the novel teaching of Martin Luther. Although revoked after the Reformation, it has continued to be used by and about all monarchs since, although its meaning has never been precisely defined.

Media monarchy

Stuart monarchs tended to push Christian monarchy in a more absolutist direction, being enamoured of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, although they also did much to forward Christianity in their realms. James VI of Scotland and I of England made a particularly valuable contribution in his patronage of the version of the Bible which still bears his name and is also known as the Authorised Version. He was adamant that it should not be a narrow reflection of a single theological position but rather an irenicon, or instrument of peace, breadth and moderation in the new United Kingdom over which he reigned.

Modified monarchy

The so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688-9, when James II was deposed because of his Catholicism and perceived absolutism and William of Orange invited by Parliament to occupy the vacant throne, effectively signalled the triumph of a covenant theory of monarchy over that of divine right. The constitutional settlement that followed it rested on a concept of limited monarchy and was based on an essentially secular concept of social and civil contract. However, neither the Reformation notion of the godly prince ruling the godly commonwealth nor the close connections between Crown and Church were swept away. Indeed, they were strengthened, with the role of the United Kingdom monarch as protector of Protestantism being expressed in the accession and coronation oaths still taken today.

Modern monarchy

Christian monarchy developed in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain to focus much more on philanthropy, civic duty and spiritual leadership demonstrated through attendance at religious services and public exhortation. The close relationship between the crown and the churches, and especially the Church of England, has remained strong while being extended in recent decades to other faith groups as the monarch has increasingly taken on the role of ‘Defender of Faith’. Television has made the monarch’s Christmas Day broadcast a significant national moment of spiritual reflection.

Review

Culture

Friendship

Theatre

7 May 2023

4 min read

Guys and Dolls' celebration of commitment

A truly joyous production of Guys and Dolls causes Oliver Wright to reflect on the positive portrayal of commitment and oath-making that underpins the show’s high-stakes rolling.

Oliver Wright

After 15 years as a lawyer in London, Oliver is currently doing a DPhil at the University of Oxford.

Five actors stand dressed in 50s clothing.

The leading characters.

Bridge Theatre.

Guys and Dolls is the quintessential musical, and it’s playing gloriously at the Bridge Theatre in London right now. As I left the theatre the other day, I found myself on the ticket website wondering about gambling on an immediate return visit. Are shows ever as good second time round, though? Can such a repeat ever bring new life? Or do repetitions fall flat, guilty of aesthetic anaesthetising?

These worries reminded me of Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Constantin Constantius, and his somewhat bewildering psychological venture Repetition (1843). In one scene, Constantius retraces his steps to a theatre where he remembers attending a farce that had him in raptures. The second time, however: not so much.

“I endured it for half an hour”,

Constantius reports,

“and then left the theatre, thinking: There is no repetition at all. This made a deep impression on me.”

But the psychological experiment does not end there. The clue is in his name – Constantin Constantius: constancy doubled, repeated. Repetition can bring new life, all things can be made new (as he implies), if repetition is coupled with constancy, with commitment. That commitment drives repetition forward, not back. “Repetition and recollection”, he claims, “are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backwards, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forwards.”

What has all this to do with Guys and Dolls in London 2023? At one level, the show is a wonderful evocation of street-life in mid-Manhattan, of smart but skittish low-level criminality – the pulsating rush for the next illicit game of dice, betting on the horses, falling in and out with Dolls, and generally trying to evade the police. You sometimes think it’s the gamblers and the gambling which steals a Guys and Dolls show.

But the way this one plays at the Bridge Theatre, I was struck by such joy and exuberance and laughter, intermingled with a celebration of commitment. What does commitment have to do with gambling; what has commitment to do with joy?

One of the leads, Sky Masterson, is my way in. We meet him first as something of a cad, flying around, emptying fellow gamblers’ pockets, carousing in Havana, returning for another round of Craps. But he nevertheless turns out to be a man of his word; he literally belongs to his promise. With a flourish early on, he hands over a fateful piece of paper: his marker, an ‘I owe you’ note. It is a guarantee.

The beneficiary is the evangelising Sarah Brown from the Soul-Mission, who Sky at this stage is wooing merely to win yet another bet. The marker is not as frivolous as his affections appear to be. This IOU has a power to which Sky willingly binds himself. Its force, Sky says, can be attested by anyone else in town. Markers will appear again much later in the drama in the chaotic scenes which lead to Sky’s reappearance, as he desperately tries to discharge his obligation, and the magnificent Luck be a Lady Tonight, itself an appeal for ‘luck’ to prove constant, not to be ‘fly-by-night’. So there is an eager commitment – when it comes to gambling – to be ‘good for the money’, to be ‘a man of my word’.

Marriage, like any relationship, involves gamble and commitment. The greater the proposed commitment, the greater the gamble. The greater the gamble up front, the greater will be the commitment required. If it wasn’t a gamble, it wouldn’t require commitment.

But the production shows another comingling of gambling and commitment: in relationships. It falls to the principal women, Sarah and Miss Adelaide, rather farcically propping up a bar, to expose this (‘Marry the man today’). Marriage, like any relationship, involves gamble and commitment. The greater the proposed commitment, the greater the gamble. The greater the gamble up front, the greater will be the commitment required. If it wasn’t a gamble, it wouldn’t require commitment. ‘Give him your hand today / And save the fist for after’!

But commitment in the show is not portrayed as the ‘grit your teeth’, or ‘turn the other cheek’ kind of commitment. No – commitment brings joy and new life to the drama. Without Sky’s IOU, there’s no Guys and Dolls. Without Sarah and Adelaide’s search for commitment, there’s only abuse. And this feeling of joy is widespread. The commitments being made are not just those ‘on stage’, but also by the audience. As you will read in the show’s reviews, the audience are implicated in the action. They are ‘immersed’, standing alongside the actors who move and dance and sing their way through them. The audience are ‘in’ the Hot Box strip-joint, sat at tables. They are gambling along with the crap-shooters. They are witnesses to the testifying in the Save-A-Soul Mission (played in this production as a high point of the show, with ‘impromptu’ encores for Nicely Nicely’s testimony ‘Sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat’). Indeed, they are not just witnesses, but participants.

That is our commitment, too. Without costume, we nevertheless agree to shed our ‘outside’ lives to participate, to be bound by the terms of the drama. And this ‘shedding’, this agreeing to be bound, this cost which we willingly take on ourselves, ignites joy. Commitment is not a stolid virtue. We need not shirk self-imposed restrictions in principle as being joy-less. There is always a gamble in relationship. And relationship’s gamble only ever pays off through commitment. Commitment to the other.

Commitment, like Kierkegaard’s ‘repetition’, can forge new life. As well as negatively portraying the ‘falling flat’ of aesthetic repetition, Kierkegaard also celebrates a repetition which is both more mundane and lifegiving. It is life recollected forwards. He writes: “Hope is a lovely maiden who slips away between one's fingers; recollection is a beautiful old woman with whom one is never satisfied at the moment; repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never wearies, for one becomes weary only of what is novel.”

Reader, I bought more tickets.